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Fans of "reality TV" are in for a real treat on July 5, when the mid-season episode of the wildly popular CBS show Survivor will air. Once audiences learn the sixth deserted-island castaway to be kicked off the show in the weekly elimination vote by comrades, CBS will launch its next real-life drama: Big Brother.
Taking its cues -- as Survivor did -- from the success of its European counterpart, Big Brother follows the antics of 10 ordinary strangers stuck in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house for three months with nothing but each other as company. With every move captured on video, the inhabitants will surrender their privacy -- and possibly their sanity -- for the chance to win $500,000. The group will whittle itself down to the winner by voting one another off the premises and getting a little help from audience participation via the Internet.
Unlike with Survivor, however, viewers will have the chance to be voyeurs for more than one hour a week. For the next 100 days, CBS.com will feature continuous live audio and video streams from the Big Brother compound via the show's Web site. This way, Net users can see and hear what the housemates are doing whenever they want. They can also look at archived material in case they missed one of the weekly episodes. "It's a never-ending show that allows for true interactive entertainment," says Adam Cohen, vice-president for streaming media at Digital Island, the company that's delivering the show's streaming content. "In extending the show, CBS is extending its existing audience and appealing to a new one."
DOLLARS FOR CONTENT?
Digital Island, which expects to produce 1,400 live events this year, is producing and distributing the video as part of a deal orchestrated by America Online, one of the company's investors. Neither CBS nor AOL returned calls seeking comment.
CBS is clearly hoping to repeat the success of Survivor, currently TV's No. 1 show, with 24 million viewers. The network is also attempting to solve one of the Net's biggest problems: How to glean revenue from content. Every time visitors check in on the Big Brother clan via the Net, they'll get one to three streaming-video ads that have been inserted in the live feeds. Built specifically for the Net, the ads are 5 to 10 seconds long. "It's important that they be unobtrusive to the viewer," Cohen says.
Typically, sites charge a $4 to $18 for every 1,000 banner ads served, Cohen says, and less than 2% of those who see an ad actually click through to the promotional site. "Sites can charge $75 to $125 per thousand views for streaming video ads because the click-through rate is 60%," he says.
CONVERGENCE PLAY.
Although CBS has been tight-lipped about its Net strategy, the Survivor and Big Brother show sites may indicate a belief in the future of interactive television. Indeed, Survivor's home page features a new interactive map, a newsletter, sweepstakes, and a store. It also promotes Survivor-related segments on other CBS shows, such as David Letterman and 48 Hours. For the week ending June 18, the number of visitors to CBS.com jumped 44%, to 600,000 from 417,000 for the prior week, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Some 40% of the total weekly audience to the network's site surfed the Survivor home page, the company says.
If CBS can draw this kind of traffic to Big Brother's 24-hour Net show, the network could serve as the example to follow. Neither NBC or ABC have made much headway with their Net initiatives -- NBCi and ABC parent Disney's Go.com. Cohen says CBS's strategy for reality TV sites will "give audiences an interactive way to be part of TV shows, while expanding the reach of TV and increasing a Web site's advertising and sponsorship revenues." That's another type of reality that CBS is counting on these new shows to create.
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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